A key challenge facing all retailers is ensuring consistency in customer service across all customer touchpoints. With multiple team members interacting with customers, it is difficult to ensure that every customer receives the same high level of service.
Without a service standard (or promise) that is focussed on what customers want when they come into a store, then this challenge becomes almost impossible. Setting clear expectations is the first step in ensuring your team know what they need to do to provide a great experience. However, just knowing what to do is not enough, they need to know the reasons why each step is important from the customer’s point of view. This massively increases the buy in from team members.
The second step is to provide training to team members so they can meet the expectations (or ideally exceed them). This sets team members up to succeed and provides them with the confidence and motivation to deliver a great experience each and every time.
And of course, team leaders have to set a great example when they serve customers, otherwise their credibility is shot to pieces.
Furthermore, as team members are human beings and not robots, without ongoing follow up from their store leader, bad habits slip in and the level of service drops. This involves two crucial steps, firstly, observing team members in action on the shop floor to identify who is doing well and who needs help to be more consistent.
Once the team leader has an understanding of where a team member is at, they need to provide feedback, ideally as soon after they see the right or wrong behaviour. This way it’s fresh in the team member’s mind.
Putting in place these simple steps and keeping them going, will ensure your team are much more consistent when serving your valuable customers.
Roger Simpson – CEO, The Retail Solution and Author of “The Ultimate Retail Sales Experience” With over 35 years’ industry experience, Roger Simpson is recognized as Australia’s #1 Authority on customer ROI in the retail industry and as a global expert on staff coaching, customer service, and selling skills.
